


Discovering Eliot

by EnemyMine



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode Related, Episode: s03e15 The Big Bang Job, Episode: s03e16 The San Lorenzo Job, F/M, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 02:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11522895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnemyMine/pseuds/EnemyMine
Summary: Eliot's hiding secrets. But with Damien Moreau handled maybe it's time to let some of them out.





	Discovering Eliot

Alec Hardison was spending his first night back in his apartment in Boston in front of various blinking computer screens. It's been less than 36 hours since the team had stolen a whole country and had taken care that Damien Moreau truly would never be able to leave San Lorenzo ever again.  
Instead of spending the night in celebration at McRory's with Nate and Sophie or rappelling from some skyscrapers with Parker or whatever their resident grouch was doing right now, the hacker took care of the team's digital footprints. There was little he could do about the tragic tale of Rebecca Sophie had spun, but Alec could at least try to find each published picture and have a little program he had developed, make automatic changes to it. So Rebecca would forever look similar to Sophie Devereaux but not exactly like her.   
At the same time he was cementing their now burnt identities of the con online, while producing new ones for those they had used to travel. Maybe it was time to finally bury Tom Baker, but Nate was somewhat fond of that particular alias. Not that Alec could make rhyme or reason about that, but in his opinion the older man was mental anyway. Brilliant, but mental.  
A third screen showed various security feeds from around their headquarters aka Nate's apartment. Some CCTV from the street, but also some cameras hidden by a landlord concerned for the well-being of his most prolific tenant. It had been the easiest amongst all changes Alec had done to the wiring of the whole apartment, when he had taken over the building. Nate never even noticed, that with Eliot distracting him with that huge ass chainsaw.

Of course the newly added rooms from the former neighboring apartment of 2B had been added to the hacker's personal security plan. They were mostly storage for props they used for cons or might still need, like a wide selection of jackets of various law enforcement agencies. There was a workshop for himself, where he could tinker with his electronics or prepare said jackets, badges and whatever else they might need without having to haul his equipment through the city each time. Sophie had claimed one room as a walk-in closet. Eliot had re-purposed the master bedroom and adjoining bathroom as his personal infirmary slash dojo. Parker however had not claimed anything but the airducts. To exactly no ones surprise.

The cameras in all parts of the apartment where motion-activated and Alec had made painstakingly sure not to put them up in a way that would intrude too much on Nate's privacy. The young man might not have had a problem with simply declaring the apartment as headquarters, but he still very much acknowledged that Nate needed to actually live there. Natural curiosity be damned, the hacker really didn't needed to know how Nate got his game on. If he ever did.  
So he covered the usual and slightly unusual possible entry points to both apartments, but kept himself in check and did not put up a camera in Nate's bedroom.

This night nothing should trigger the motion sensors apart from Nate making his way upstairs from the bar, once he had his fill of his poison of choice. Surely nothing should have the computer screen suddenly show the door of apartment 2B.   
But as Alec clearly was able to see, once he realized the motion being recorded, the familiar form of the team's hitter had just closed the door behind him and was in the process of walking straight to his personal medical “heaven”.  
The hacker frowned. Eliot was always very secretive, especially about the various injuries he contracted in his line of work, but apart from the part where he had gone down with the SWAT team to “The Tombs” to free General Flores and his men, he had not been part of any action during their “election campaign”. There simply was none apart from the fake shooting of Rebecca, alias Sophie, and Nate getting thrown around a bit by the previous president.

Those musings let Alec go back a bit more. DC had been a hell of a lot more action packed. For his part he of course knew about the Ram's Horn blowing up, since he had initiated the whole thing. Totally worth it, since Parker had decided to give “pretzels” a chance then and there!  
On the other end, Nate and Eliot had somehow run across the Italian at the airport, with the latter getting shot by Moreau. How and why that nastiness happened the two team members had been suspiciously mum about. But Alec mused it could be possible that Eliot had gotten banged up there somehow. After all he had seen Moreau's security force firsthand at the pool. 

All musings suddenly came to a screeching halt, when aforementioned hitter opened the door to his personal infirmary and an unknown female figure suddenly jumped at him from inside the room. Alec's heart stopped in alarm for a second, before his brain caught on that the woman was not in fact attacking his friend, but held the man in a full body hug. Which the long-haired guy whole-heartedly approved, if his head tilted back and his face showing one of his rare full laughs was any indication.

That sight was enough to give the hacker another second pause. Eliot not being surprised by the appearance was one thing – which still remained a riddle Alec vowed to solve, while his fingers already started typing away at the keyboard to access the security feed of days past to figure out, when and how exactly this unknown woman had gained entry not only to the apartment but had hid herself away in Eliot's domain.

The other thing was the hitter's complete and utter relaxation with being used as some form of climbing pole all of a sudden. The Southerner was a charming, relatively open guy, sure, but he rarely was seen this relaxed. Even with his various conquests he always stayed guarded. The only one Alec had seen Eliot had been close to being that unguarded with had been Parker, when the blonde had been on happy pills and had jumped straight into his arms. Still even then he had growled and not laughed.

While being distracted with his thoughts, the man on screen had carried his personal monkey back into the room and closed the door behind them. Thus leaving the hacker to his technology and the riddle to be solved.   
A couple of key strokes had the recording rewound and Alec was pretty shocked to realize that the unknown woman had moved freely in both apartments for the whole time the team had been in San Lorenzo. She had limited herself to Eliot's domain and the kitchen though, never even once trying to snoop through Nate's personal stuff or their stashes. A couple of times she appeared to have been tempted to walk up to one of the windows, but every time she had kept herself from giving into the urge. Instead she disappeared back into the infirmary and was not seen again for hours.

It took Alec a bit to find the time stamp of her entry into the apartment. But when he did, the urge to solve that riddle only intensified.   
Having her appear at Nate's door at Eliot's side was not that surprising considering the welcoming scene he had witnessed and the fact that she had been hiding out basically in his room. What surprised him that Nate was the one opening the door for them both!  
Alec saw them sitting down together at the dining table, saw Eliot holding the unknown woman's hand all the time, while both were obviously telling Nate a longer story. He saw Nate attentively listening without once showing any emotion, which could have hinted at the contents. Not the first time that Alec cursed his common decency not to put up microphones as well.  
After what had been quite a while, Eliot had shown the woman to his infirmary and had returned to Nate for another couple of words, before leaving the apartment and subsequently the building altogether. The time stamp showed that it had been only hours before the team had boarded the plane that brought them to San Lorenzo.

Even though he tried, he had known beforehand, that trying to track Eliot's way to Nate's back to wherever he and the woman had come from would be an exercise in futility. Years of working with the world-renown retrieval specialist had seen to that. When Eliot did not want to be found, he could not be found. And none of the team knew about his safe-houses.   
Parker had been able to follow him to one. Once. That had been while they had still been in LA. Safe to say, Eliot had abandoned the safe-house by the next day. And no matter where Alec had hidden trackers on the man, he always found them all. If he had a nice day, he would simply leave them all on the table, but if he felt particular grumpy he would make sure to submerge them in water and thus render them useless first. Paranoid bastard!

*

The next day saw all electronic trails of the team in San Lorenzo erased. They had never been there and had nothing to with the election or bringing Moreau to justice. According to false traces, they were in fact working a case in sunny Florida at the same time, should someone ask. Nobody would, not with the Italian having a vested interest in Moreau staying put exactly where he was now, but Alec simply liked to be able to do at least this much for any kind of misdirect.

When the hacker had informed the mastermind of his progress he was tempted to ask Nate about the woman. But even if he tended to lose his decorum from time to time, Alec knew better than to talk about potentially sensitive matters on unsecured lines. Also he knew that Nate had just waited for his report as to call in the whole team for the final debriefing, before they scattered and laid low for a while to give the whole mess time to cool down.  
So Alec Hardison simply walked into the apartment slightly before the meeting time shortly after lunch, which was usual for him so he could set up whatever virtual presentation he needed to put on the screens. Nate was simply letting him be, while busying himself with the percolator and what most likely was not the first Irish coffee of the day. Somewhere in between he threw one of the orange sodas from the fridge to the hacker, just like any other time he got busy in the mastermind's living space.

The next to make her entry was the grifter. Sophie Devereaux might have a tendency to be fashionably late when playing it up to a mark, but never in real life. Another thing was that the whole team was very much aware, that she not only liked, but needed those few moments, where she was practically alone with Nate. Alec wondered not for the first time, when those two would finally get over themselves and hit it off already!

While he was still shaking his head about the more or less parental figures of their group – which was totally what Nate was, okay, but to be fair Sophie might play at being ageless, but she was still clearly younger than the object of her desires and frustration.   
By Alec's estimation – based on the one or two times he had seen Sophie without any kind of make-up – she might have been around Eliot's age, maybe even a bit younger. So probably at most in her early thirties. Which made her not even ten years older than Alec himself, who was pretty much the baby of the group. Of course, he would never dare telling her that to her face and best never to whisper a word about it anywhere. That woman sure could be scary sometimes and Nana had taught him better than to insinuate something about the age of women. If they preferred to be ageless, he would be the last to stop them!

Parker however never cared about stuff like that. Which was a blessing and a curse. It was different and that was like a breath of fresh air after being stuck with a new WOW expansion pack for 48 hours straight. But it was a curse because nothing he had learned and thought he knew applied to her.  
Just like at this very moment, she suddenly appeared from nowhere on her usual place on the couch in front of the screens. Other women might use the door after having rung the bell or opening it with a key. Parker probably came through the air vents from the roof into Nate's bedroom and then sneaked down the spiraling stairs. If she somehow managed to snatch the fortune cookies from the kitchen cupboards on the way or if she brought them with her was anybody's guess.

By now Sophie had taken the other end of the couch next to the chair Nate sometimes occupied, when he was not pacing in front of the screens. The man himself was currently carrying a tray of various mugs filled with coffee and tea towards the seating arrangement.   
Now the only one missing was their resident hitter. Alec of course had checked a couple of times during the morning, so he was very much aware, that their team mate still was in female company just a very short distance away. But as much as it itched him to blurt out his knowledge, he knew better than to do so.  
Yes, he was still a bit cross with Eliot about him keeping his past in the ranks of Damien Moreau a secret, but that would not justify spreading the man's secrets. Especially when he did not know all of the facts.

While he was still busy biting his tongue, the object of his contemplations made a silent appearance at the adjoining door to the former neighboring apartment. The one he had sawed himself during those early days in Boston.  
Eliot looked well-rested, wearing his trademark outfit of bootcut jeans, shirt over wife-beater. Some leather and silver jewelry adorning his wrists, a Native American-made turquoise necklace had joined the one with the silver pendant he always wore. Nothing indicated anything amiss but that he in fact was barefoot and was not entering the living space.  
Nate of course had noticed his arrival and the two of them seemed to have a staring contest. The older man being the only one, who Alec had ever seen to be able to outlast Mr. Grumpy Pants. Just like it was happening again. The blue eyes of the hitter were lowered towards the floorboards and Nate's gaze concentrated back to the rest of the room. 

A cough from the mastermind brought the whole team to attention. The women only now realizing of the unusual position their professional security blanket still was in. The Southener nearly seemed to fidgeted under the sudden scrutiny.

“Okay, there really is not much to say about the conclusion of the latest case. Hardison has wrapped up the digital clean-up and as far as anyone is concerned, we never were in San Lorenzo...” A near silent huff of laughter interrupted the mastermind from the doorway.

“Most of us,” a poignant glare towards the still standing man followed, as Nate corrected himself, “were never in San Lorenzo. I expect that most of us never will travel to that country in future.”

Alec automatic internal Nate-Translator offered, 'We had nothing to do with Damien Moreau's downfall and to make sure that we will never be connected to that nastiness, San Lorenzo simply stops existing for us.' He had no problem whatsoever with that.

Nate continued unaware of that inner process: “Which pretty much concludes the final debriefing for most of us. As for the rest of us -” Another poignant glare was sent towards their resident hitter, “- due to recently raised concerns and questions, Eliot has something to share.”  
A near theatrical wave of his hand beckoned the younger man to take this as his cue, while the mastermind simply sat down into his chair and took his cooling mug of Irish coffee.

Eliot however stood for a beat longer in the doorway, shuffling his feet, looking as much as Parker would shortly before she was about to bolt. Then a slight shudder went through his whole body, which visibly straightened, and he took a step towards the team. To the surprise of them, in his stead appear a young red-headed woman in the doorway. Looking every bit as nervous as Eliot shortly before.

“Guys, this -,” a small gesture backwards indicated the unknown woman, Alec had only seen in black and white before, “- is Kat…. Katrina.”  
Smiles now replaced the nervous faces on both people. A wave was hinted at from her, before she was back at showing nervous behavior. Biting her lips was a huge give-away. 

The clearing of Eliot's throat had the whole team diverting their attention back to their team-mate at once: “Kat is my… She is my wife.”

At once Sophie and Alec himself found themselves making noises of protest and wonder, while Parker simply tilted her head and scrunched her face in a way to puzzle out the meaning of this new fact for her life. 

“But you're not married!” Alec heard himself cry out petulantly. After all they had had their little heart to heart back in the LA offices of Leverage Consulting and Associates during that job with the mob wedding. The young man clearly remembered asking his relatively new team member if he had ever been married and him only admitting to having liberating some country instead.

Obviously the man remembered the same conversation with the way his eyes suddenly twinkled in mirth: “I insinuated to have come close once. You drew the conclusion that that was all there was all by yourself.”   
Adding after being on the receiving end of Alec's patented bitch-face, “Damnit Hardison! We've worked together how many jobs at that time? Two? Three? Don't judge me for not wearing my heart on my sleeve, especially back then!”

“But, when? How?” the hacker stuttered, his curious brain needing the information, while feeling a bit betrayed. Again. “You could have told us!”

Eliot's smile turned slightly sardonical: “Not even my own family knows about her, for their and Kat's protection. But sure I could have told you….” Calming down at seeing the crushed look on his friend's face, “I am telling you now.”

Alec suddenly understood something, “It's safe now?”

A big grin bloomed on the face of his friend: “Yeah! As safe as it every will be.”

A new voice, clear alto, from the doorway chimed in: “Moreau is gone.”

*

The first wave of Sophie's agitation was slowly starting to cool down. Eliot had made Kat sit in his usual seat next to Parker, who was now intently staring at the strange woman. One pointer finger had made an appearance from the crook of her elbow from her crossed arms and Alec knew it to be a fool's bet if she would start poking the redhead soon. He still was not exactly sure as to why Parker felt the need to poke people – or their wounds – but he knew it to be a regular occurrence.

The third woman on the couch was still barely containing huffs. As much as Sophie came across as any normal, reasonable person, Alec still knew the brunette to have issues. Mostly those pertained to their fearless leader, his relationship with his ex-wife and his drinking, but she also could not stand not to be able to figure things out as the first one.   
Her whole craft, maybe even her life depended on her ability to read people. To know things before they even knew it themselves. A grifter's job was to sell people their most secret dreams and desires. So for Sophie not having picked up on the fact of Eliot's marital status after working closely with him for years must rankle her.

Still not enough reason in Alec's opinion to show her discontent so openly. He was not huffing and puffing, wasn't he?  
Yes, he had a bit of warning in that he knew that there was a mystery woman hiding out at headquarters, but nothing more. He had started to consider the hitter as something akin to a foster brother, once he had started to stop being scared of him after the initial show of Eliot's skills and some cursory research into the man's career.   
Physical action, least of all violence, so was not Alec's world, while Eliot's completely consisted of it. So they were polar opposites most of the time. And this discrepancy had scared him. Until the man had started to open up somewhat after they had saved his friend's stable. That job sure made the hitter more tangible to the younger man.  
So, yes, Alec was rightly miffed that Eliot kept something that big from them. Not pissed like he had been when he discovered the older one's ties to Moreau, but still a tad bit angry. It was a matter of trust.   
But from the last words spoken, before Kat had been placed in their midst and Eliot and Nate had started to busy themselves with another round of beverages for them all, there seemed to be a connection with that whole nastiness. After seeing to uncover most of the stuff Moreau had dealt with, Alec was willing to give his buddy the benefit of a doubt. After all hadn't Eliot stated, back in that park in DC, that he had tried to find a way to work around the team, to keep them away from Moreau, to keep them safe? So maybe, just maybe, keeping the existence of a wife secret from them fell along those lines.  
A bottle of orangy goodness was passed to him by the long-haired Southener. A smirk played around the man's lips as if he had been able to read Alec's thought just now. 

'He probably was,' mused the younger man internally. After all Eliot had been working alone for years before joining up with this team and even though the team tended to forget it time and time again, he was more than just a mindless muscle. Hitters in the sense of thugs, muscle for hire, were a dime a dozen. Eliot Spencer however was a retrieval specialist. He not only knew pretty much all obscure con names Nate and Sophie oftentimes sprouted, he knew how to execute them all and knew variants to make them work for himself.  
As the hacker saw his team mate serve a mug with coffee – black, no sugar, he had noticed – to his wife with a heartfelt open smile, that made his eyes wrinkle and took about five years off of the man, his fingertips lingering just a moment longer than necessary on the contact with her hands, he couldn't help but wonder how they all always tended to repress their knowledge about Eliot's talents and character.

This gentle man with the southern charm and the astoundingly soft hands was who Eliot Spencer was at his core. Soft-spoken and well-read. Highly trained. A true specialist. Not just a human security blanket for a group of thieves.

Alec remembered Serbia and the kids from the orphanage, remembered their way in with the mark. Eliot had been the grifter on that one, charming the soft erotica actress of long days past into buying into the reawakening of her dream of stardom. Alec also remembered the abandoned office where they had taken temporary refuge for their base of operations, still heard Sophie and Nate's bickering, which disrupted the con to the point of leaving Parker without com support. So she had stabbed the second mark. Meanwhile Sophie was supposed to guide Eliot through the grift.

They hadn't known each other that well, it had still been early days of Leverage Consulting and Associates, so it was just natural to think the hitter would need to be directed by the grifter. But in hindsight Alec understood that Eliot was simply humoring them, while keeping his options open. As long as they underestimated him, he would be able to make a getaway they would never suspect or be able to trace.  
Of course the experienced retrieval specialist knew how to charm the wannabe starlet into buying into the con. It was what he did all the time. Using charm and flirting to get something, be it the mark on the hook, access to a secure facility, a diversion to plant a device. He might not know how to maintain a cover persona for a long con like Sophie Devereaux, Annie Croy, Karen Ipcriss, Lady Charlotte Prentiss or whatever her name was this week, but he knew enough to charm a lady at a cocktail party.

With the same clarity Alec understood that his friend could read him so well, he discovered that Eliot still used the same methods to this very day. He never showed his hands fully, only in bits and pieces when absolutely necessary.   
Still led Sophie believe, that he needed her guidance on the grift, still let Parker lecture him on all kinds of rappelling gear, still listened attentively to all obscure explanations Nate was willing to give, still very much denied all knowledge about technology. But for once the hacker saw through the smoke screen. Eliot was well-rounded enough to get by on his own for years.   
He might not be able to hack into CIA files, but then he probably knew a lot of people who might be able to do just that for a small fee or a favor.   
And then there were the scary details Eliot simply knew, which Alec had to painstakingly hack and research. Like a lot of government secrets. Scary government secrets about hidden bases, lost weaponry, distribution of funds and troops at any given time. Additionally Eliot could do basically all the team's work on his own. Maybe not as fast and hard as they did together and with their respective talents, but well enough to get the job done. Plus something extra. Eliot could not only use Parker's gear, he could build it from scratch. He could put on different personae like a glove, but he also was able to achieve things by simply being Eliot Spencer. The most scary thing though, Alec had to admit to himself, was that he was able to call Nate out on his shit.   
When their mastermind went of track, the cons getting to complicated or the man simply being too drunk – or in some rare cases not drunk enough – Eliot would be the one getting in the man's face about it. Making sure the team was safe even from their esteemed leader. Being their hitter at all times.

By now the people had rearranged themselves back into the cushions. Sophie was still, more silently now, huffing, while now being perched on the couch's armrest closest to Nate. Who still very much owned his chair like one would a throne. But he had now given up the pretense of coffee and now held a glass in which amber liquid was languidly swirling. 'That didn't bode well for the things to come', Alec couldn't help but think.  
Eliot had taken over the spot Sophie had vacated, sitting right next to Kat – the words 'his wife' still feeling weird to even think to the hacker – who was just now getting poked by Parker. But instead of earning herself one of Eliot's patented 'don't poke'-glares or its brother of 'there is something wrong with you', Kat simply put down her mug and poked back. 

For a moment Parker looked very much like a fish out of water, before a huge smile took over her whole face and she loudly exclaimed: “HA!”

All eyes were now on the lithe blonde, but nothing more was forthcoming. She simply took to taking a sniff of the red hair and went back to sitting there normally, starting to munch on some cereal that just had happened to appear from nowhere.

It was then that Eliot shook his head and cleared his throat and Alec, like everyone, focused on him: “So, I guess I own you an explanation…. Another one. Remind me not to make that a habit, won't you.” A strong hand nervously ran through naturally dark brown hair and barely managed to avoid getting caught on a braid running down from behind Eliot's ear, which Alec hadn't noticed before and that hadn't been there the last time they had seen each other in person, despite the turquoise and silver bead holding it together. 

After a short glance passed between the mastermind and their team mate, the latter fixed his gaze firmly to the surface of the coffee table and continued with a sigh: “Well, I guess I'll answer the question of when first… Kat and I have been married for about five years now. Basically the moment I left Damien's ranks. Seemed to be a good idea with my line of work, to at least being able to give her the security of death benefits should I snuff it during one of my more legal jobs.”

Here Eliot must have felt Sophie's stare on the back of his head, for he turned to look straight at her: “Military, Sophie. I'm technically still under oath to my country and I tend to still do the occasional odd job for them.”

Obviously satisfied with the slight widening of the grifter's eyes, he returned to staring the coffee table into submission: ”If it wasn't for that it might have even been better...” A rather petite hand touched the wrist closest to her at that.   
“Or maybe not,” he turned to smile at her. “Anyway… I was married the whole time and did not tell you. And I'm not sorry about that. Keeping stuff like that from you means keeping it from everyone else too. Means keeping Kat safe, means adding another layer of security to my family's safety. After the things I've done, that's the least I can do. To make sure nothing falls back unto them.”

Surprisingly it was Parker, who asked the obvious question: “So why tell us now?”

One of those special smiles Eliot reserved just for the lithe blonde played around his mouth. He now turned his whole upper body to look directly at her, as if having decided to talk only to her from now on, “Because now it might actually be safer for them that you know. Moreau is gone and as much as his continued presence had been a risk to be avoided at any cost, his absence now leaves a void others might try to fill.”   
Feeling the questions rising in the grifter and hacker, he immediately added: “I'm a wanted man. At least five different countries have bounties on my head and there might even be a fatwa – never went back to check, obviously. Apart from that I have made many enemies. Comes with the trade of being damn good at what I do. A retrieval specialist without enemies is lousy at his job. The most dangerous of my enemies were kept at bay as long as Damien practically had dibs on me….”  
Eliot chuckled humorlessly, while returning to his staring contest with the coffee table. Only now Alec was realizing that he was actually looking at it with practically unseeing eyes.

“I had a reputation even before working with Damien. But being the one man, who had worked with him and was able to walk away freely boosted it. Certain forces in my field took that to mean, that one of these days Damien would come to collect on the debt and decided better not to get mixed up with that. Meaning not to take me out, if that might mean taking away that chance from Moreau's men, thus landing on their hitlist themselves. Others took my walking as a sign that I was the force they wouldn't want to mess with. Anyway the most dangerous enemies I made mostly let me be for the last five years. Now that we took care of Moreau and basically destroyed his whole organization there is a vacuum of power AND fear.”   
Now turning to each and everyone of his team mates, Eliot looked them straight in the eyes, “They will come crawling. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for another year, but they will come and they will try to take their piece out of me. So, I'm telling you now, because Kat will be safer with you in the know.”

Only a couple of months before, heck, even just a couple of weeks prior, Alec Hardison would have been cowed into absolute terror with that speech. But if the hunt for Damien Moreau had anything good for him personally to offer, it would have been to strengthen his resilience to mentions of violence, death and destruction somewhat.   
So without thinking about the consequences, he simply blurted out the first thought in his head: “What exactly did you do to be able to walk?”

Promptly and audibly shutting his mouth the moment he had heard himself speak. 'Stupid, Alec, waving the red flag in front of the bull. Not cool, brah, not cool!'  
Instead of the expected pummeling or at least some serious growling and accompanying threats to his manhood, over the pounding of his heart he heard a husky snicker. 

“Damnit, Hardison!” the hitter uttered without any heat in his voice. “Trust you to have absolutely no self-preservation instincts.” 

A light laugher was heard from Eliot's right side, where Kat could not keep in her mirth any longer. “Excuse me,“ her alto sounded, “you are just all so much like he said you'd be.”

“You doubted me, darling?” her husband mock indignantly asked. A soft slap on his forearm and an eye roll was all the answer he got.

After a moment to gather themselves, Eliot took off where he had left off: “To answer your question, Hardison, I made a deal with the devil and I will forever pay the prize for that. The worst thing I've ever done and I didn't do it for the money, the honor or because of some sick belief in the cause. I did it to get me,” his thumb indicated Kat, “but especially her out of there.” 

Now both hands were run through his hair, while the woman at his side sneaked one arm behind his back, unconsciously starting to rub circles into his broad shoulders. “Damien is – was – a business man, so I approached him like one, where others tended to make the mistake of threatening him or trying to go behind his back. Which got them dead pretty quick. I've been at the top of his organization too long not to know how he operated, what he demanded from every one in his employ. As high as I have climbed the ladder, I still was his employee at the end of the day and my 'contractual obligations' could be my downfall. So I bought myself free of my contract. One last job, completely on Damien's terms and I would walk. No turning back, no trying to cross him down the line, simply steering clear of him and his ventures, keeping our past confidential. He agreed, gave me an objective, I packed up my stuff, made sure Kat got out unnoticed stateside, using my exit as distraction and headed to Serbia. Belgrade's never been the same for me after that. Stopped carrying guns after that too. Despite all that, it was worth it.” His left found the smaller hand still on his forearm.  
“Took a lot out of you,” the alto softly murmured. “I'll never be able to make it up to you.”

“Not your job to, darling,” he rebutted equally as soft.

They all had witnessed Eliot flirting over the years, but never had it come close to be that intimate as those utterances and gestures had been. Alec felt the embarrassed need to avert his gaze and could tell that at least Sophie fought the same urge. 

Still it was the brunette breaking the silence with a cough first: “Why unnoticed? You said you got her out unnoticed. Why not openly?”

A silent communication took place between the pair. Eliot barely noticeable shaking his head, while tears seemed to gather in the corner's of Katrina's eyes. Nonetheless the woman never lowered her eyes and seemed to try to convey her permission to speak to her husband. Who only turned down his head in defeat, interlinking all fingers of their touching hands. 

He did not appear to be able to speak though, so it were her words bridging the silence: “According to Moreau's knowledge I died six years ago. Shortly after he had all members of my family killed.”

“Kat's father made the mistake of opposing certain activities in his neighborhood. He pretty much took care to keep the area clean,“ Eliot seemed to have gathered the resolve to take over the tale with her words. “To bad that it was one of Damien's ventures. He wanted to make a statement…. When Damien ordered a hit, it usually meant to take out the whole family. Everyone, eradicate them from the face of this earth. Sometimes exceptions were made to 'prolong the lesson' – torture sometimes, but mostly cases of human trafficking. Girls might find themselves wishing not to have survived after all, when being forced into prostitution and sexual slavery.”  
Alec could tell that Eliot really, really did not want to tell them these sordid details. But for what it was worth, the young man could honor that the man still did it.

“Kat… She fit the profile.” The way Eliot said that sounded nearly defeated. “So she was spared and stashed away to be shipped off to the highest bidder. But she was feisty, too strong. So they kept her to break her first…. It's how I came to know her.” 

The hacker was not sure what tipped him of more about the implications. The bone-weary sigh that escaped Eliot or Sophie's hand flying up to cover her mouth. He felt that he might get sick just thinking about it.   
But before his stomach actually got the notice, the redhead spoke up again: “I had been beaten, starved, pretty much all but raped by Moreau's men. Eliot was a blessing in disguise.” The denial in their postures must have screamed to her. “You don't get it! I was already dead! Not giving in, denying them the satisfaction of breaking was my death sentence! Sending in Eliot to nonetheless break me, was some kind of sick game to them. But not to him! Oh, I know the things he's capable of, that he could have done to me. But he didn't!” The woman was nearly standing in defense of her man, which impressed Alec on so many different levels, he actually was confused for a second about what was going on. 

Clarity returned with the well-known baritone of his team mate: “Shush, Kat. It's okay, darling. It's not their world and I'm grateful for that.”   
After having his wife firmly seated again, the hitter concentrated back on the story: “I knew about that part of the organization, but I had never been active in it. And honestly I had not allowed myself to think to much about it all. Until that day Damien ordered me to offer my 'professional expertise' in a special case. I still don't know how I managed to pull of that deception in that amount of time… Anyway, when I left the premises that day, everybody was convinced that Kat had not survived, when in fact I smuggled her out straight under their noses to my personal quarters. Which she had not been able to leave for the next 10 months until I finally made a deal with the devil.”

*

After the necessary things had been said, the room had sunk in some kind of uncomfortable silence.   
Well, not so much from their mastermind's side. Nate had been silently watching the whole time, sometimes sipping his whiskey, but mostly keeping the liquid swirling in its glass. That didn't change once Eliot had said his piece and stopped volunteering more information.  
Alec gathered that he already had heard the whole story when their hitter had brought his wife into the protection of Nate's apartment. There was also always the creepy matter of him simply knowing stuff about his team. Of course he had chased pretty much all of them at one point or the other while still with IYS, which might explain some of the facts. But surely not all of them. Alec knew for a fact, that he had never dug around his team mates digital footprints apart from when it was needed to solidify an alibi. So Nate didn't have it from him.

Parker also didn't seem to perturbed by the whole thing. Her... – actually, he was still not sure what to exactly call himself, since he could not imagine the thief to be very happy about the term “boyfriend” - Anyway, he still vividly remember the tears that had gathered in her eyes in that park. Another reason he had been so incredible pissed at Eliot and his secret keeping. He nearly had made Parker cry!   
But then Eliot had begged her not to ask questions or he would have to tell her the truth and Parker had simply accepted that. If it hadn't been for the discovery what Ram's Horn truly was, Alec would have been flummoxed. Normally Parker quite literally poked and prodded until she got whatever answer she was looking for, but sometimes – like in that park – one gaze, one word, a request by Eliot was all to keep her idle fingers still. Something no one else in this team managed. If it wasn't for his own feelings regarding Parker and her interest in “pretzels”, he might have started to become paranoid.

The thief had left the apartment stealthily once she had gotten what Eliot had been willing to give. She had been the first. Satisfied with the new status quo she had not even mentioned anything about it, when she had said her goodbyes to Alec. Instead she was asking him to hack into the land registration office of some city in Asia, as to acquire the blue prints of a museum. Obviously already planning a heist for the team's enforced vacation.

When Sophie had recovered from the first shock and started to make a fuss, Nate had simply invited her to some liquid remedy down at McRory's. Having the choice between stewing in whatever irked her more about the whole thing or at least being able to vent to another adult about, she had followed him out of the door.  
Leaving Eliot, his wife and Alec. The latter working his magic to practically fortify the systems for his prolonged absence, setting up traps for uninvited hackers, making sure the security features were all in perfect working conditions. A couple months without maintenance, with only Nate able to push a button if needed – Alec was not taking any chances.   
The former was leading his wife back into the second apartment. Low voices barely audible, but Alec was sure he heard Eliot mentioning something about making sure, they had everything. But then Alec felt the tell-tale prickle of being watched. 

Sure enough Eliot stood next to him, looking intently at him. Being at the receiving end of that kind of scrutiny by the hitter was never a preferred past-time of the younger man, who couldn't help the involuntary swallow.

“We okay?” asked his older friend. For a moment Alec was not comprehending the meaning behind the words, until it hit him like a freight train. He had been the one having the most problems with Eliot's secrecy in DC. There was no reason for him to think this time would be any different.

His first instinct was something akin to 'we're cool, brah', but he stopped himself. No, he was not cool with the whole thing! So he uttered the second thing coming to his mind: “Don't you trust me?”

Inwardly busy with slapping himself upside the head, Alec missed the humorous twinkle that appeared for a fraction of a second in the hitter's blue eyes before it diminished again. He did not miss the fact however, that the man let himself fall into the couch cushions closest to the hacker's chair. He also didn't miss the sigh escaping his friend's lips. 

“It's not that I don't trust you,” Eliot offered uncharacteristically soft. “It's just that I know how this world works. And don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for every day that you don't have to! That's why a team needs a hitter. To keep stuff like that from coming at people like you.” He shook his head softly, barely disturbing his long hair doing so.  
“As I said, Alec. I made a deal with the devil and one day he'll come to collect.” One hand was raised slightly to stop intended interruption by the younger man. “It will be collected. Might not be Moreau anymore, but this world is full of devils and I have danced with danger far too long than to expect to get away unscathed. And that's okay, Alec. It's what I do.”  
Again the younger man tried to get a word in edgewise, but being newly fixed with one of Eliot's patented glares averted another attempt.   
“I'm far from suicidal. But I have already beat the odds for someone like me. I have outlived most of the men I have served with in the army, despite me being drafted for more special operations without the whole back-up system. A simple grunt like me does not get to be made Commander for nothing, Hardison. And I'm far from being retired, am I? Might not be deployed to some war or conflict or what-not regularly, but being a retrieval specialist has its own inherent dangers. One of these days someone will get lucky. Maybe I will not be healed enough from some previous altercation, maybe they'll get in a lucky punch, maybe one day I won't see the gun directed at me. Or maybe my reflexes will have started to wane due to age. Maybe it will be a con gone wrong, maybe a hit on my head, maybe one of these countries will raise their bounties… But it will happen and I made my peace with that a long time ago. If it happens so one of you will live, I did my job right.”

“That doesn't answer my question,” the hacker whispered.

“I trust you. More than I have ever trusted anyone in this freaking world,” Eliot held his gaze steadfastly. “We're a team. More than a team. Y'all managed to crawl under my skin. But that also means, this is more than a job. It's more important. - I wouldn't have walked into Damien's lair for anyone but y'all. I wouldn't have…,” he trailed off. Something in his eyes told Alec that there was more to the story, but that there was no chance his friend would open up about it now.

The reappearance of Katrina in the doorway, now saddled with a backpack, ended effectively their little heart to heart. After some awkward goodbyes the couple vanished into the city for what Alec was pretty sure a months-long tour of various safe-houses.   
He actually tried not to think about where exactly people like that lived and how. He was a criminal, he knew what it was like to travel light and fast in a pinch, but the measures Eliot was going to were extreme. But he guessed, after everything he now knew, it was somewhat justified.

'Still, brah, dragging a woman around like that… Na, rather have myself dragged…' the hacker chuckled to himself, when he returned back to his fortifications. Only to stop short at the sight of an envelope perched across his keyboard.  
'Sneaky bastard,' he thought when he recognized Eliot's cursive within.

“If you really want to know, try this ip address in a quiet minute about a year from now. When things have calmed down a bit and someone looking at it might not raise all kinds of red flags anymore. Well, not more than usually.”

*

A year later saw them scattering once again. Boston was burned for them after Nate had executed his special brand of revenge for his father's death. Even if Alec would have remembered the words in the envelope, he wouldn't have dared to take a look in that climate. Not with FBI, State Police and Interpol lurking around.   
Once he had been informed to prepare something in Portland, Oregon for the team and met up with Nate, Alec simply had no time to think back on past deeds and hidden envelopes. The secret project of tracking the black book pretty much taking up all of his time, which was not already occupied with cons, the brewpub and Parker that is.  
It was not until he couldn't help but actually see, really see what Eliot was truly capable, that his memory flared up for a moment. Ironically it was DC, again. But then they were quiet busy stopping an outbreak of the Spanish Influenza, thank you very much. So no more energy was exerted to think about things long past.

When the team managed to obtain the black book, Nate and Sophie left. Alec was busy with his brother in all but blood and his girl to keep up the good fight, while organizing Leverage International via the darknet. They did their best and they were the best, some even said nastiest, crew. They only slowed down a couple years later. Parker fell pregnant and they simply could not do any more jobs like that. Not risking the well-being of a child. At first they still supervised other teams, helped to start new talents, but Eliot spent more and more time away from the city somwhere with his wife, while Alec's and Parker's child made honest citizens out of them.

It had been the evening of their baby's fifth birthday, one of the rare occasions that Eliot had actually shown up again and in company of a visibly rounded redhead too. The paranoia of the erstwhile team's hitter was raging full force, but Kat had firm grip on his shenanigans.   
After all guests had left again, and Alec's angels were tucked away in the apartment over the brewpub, the man followed the nagging sensation in his brain down to the former headquarters of Leverage Consulting and Associates.   
It had long been refurnished and was now either an additional living room slash rappelling hall or a room that could be rented for special occasions. The glass panel walls were gone as well as the huge strategy table. The screens remained, so that sporting events and similar stuff might be watched. The small space at the back, where Alec had spent many hours tinkering with his equipment now housed a small office, which was mainly used by Amy nowadays, who pretty much had taken over the daily business of the brewpub.

It was that little space Alec aimed for now. Hidden there behind an unassuming filing cabinet was the switch which allowed him full access again to the technology of the team days. One flip and he connected the interfaces and was able to pull everything back up on the screen.   
The simply browser window was the only thing up there as Alec dragged a chair to face the wall. His laptop was placed on his knees and an old wrinkled envelope was pulled from a back pocket. 

It had been many years since he had received it, nearly as many since he had even thought about quenching his curiosity. Whatever issues Alec did have back then, they were first put on the back-burner and later had proven to be simply unimportant. Eliot had remained steadfast in all kinds of crisis, standing next to them and more often then not saving their collective asses.   
But no matter what he tried to tell himself on this day, seeing their extended family together, knowing they would grow again, he couldn't help but remember words spoken so long ago: “I made a deal with the devil and one day he'll come to collect.”

Despite the team going against bigger and bigger adversaries, even expanding their ventures world-wide, only the occasional blast from the past had come to haunt them. Worst of them having been the combined forces of Dubenich and Latimer. They had taken them down without prejudice and thus send the signal around the world, not to mess with what was theirs.

To see those men tumble over the edge in their mad scramble for the gun, Alec had lost the last of his innocence. And he had finally been able to put things into perspective that before simply evaded him. After all he always had just been the hacker since his childhood days.   
He had done things for fun or to help Nana paying her hospital bills. The worst he had been capable of before had been a couple dozen subscriptions to porn magazines and sites. Until he started to run with Nate's crew and realized that he too was no longer a kid playing with computer code, trying to be the first to crack a system, but truly a criminal. Until he saw other criminals from different walks of life and realized what they all had given up for this life. A life now devoted to help where the law left off. 

Alec had heard the words Eliot had said back then. But he couldn't truly grasp their meaning. Yes, he had seen the deeds to Moreau's name, but that had been Moreau, not their soft-spoken, charismatic hitter, who actually had worn glasses to their first ever job. Intellectually Alec knew that Eliot must have done at least some of them, but it didn't fully compute. Until Dubenich and Latimer tumbled over that edge.  
Eliot had been the only one of them not shocked by their deaths, but actually relieved by the way it had been done. Nate still technically had clean hands and Alec remembered how the hitter had tried to reason with him beforehand, how Quinn had told them how Eliot actually had pulled a gun on Dubenich but had stopped himself from pulling the trigger.

It all was so many years in the past, Alec nearly had forgotten about it all. But seeing the proof of the new life growing beneath Kat's heart brought it all back. Of the hopelessness in Eliot's eyes when he talked about the bounties on his head, of the reason why he married in the first place. The many occasions he had ended a con by crawling into his infirmary and refusing anyone's help with his countless wounds. The gunshots he received in DC, which he had been so blasé about. The realization that he had been part of even more dangerous missions up until that point for that Vance guy.

No, Alec didn't really want more information about his friend. But he would dig deep, deeper than ever before to make sure that his child would never have to grow up without his father. Because some unsavories came crawling.   
He carefully extracted the piece of paper from within and unusually slow typed the numbers into the url field.

On a simple website appeared a myriad of scans of documents, most with some form of government or military seal on top and the tell-tale stamp of classified over it. But what drew Alec's eyes the most was a video window, which showed a younger Eliot before a glass front showing a nice summer day over a wide stretch of green grass, some flower beds left and right, a shock of red hair being visible in the background tending to them.   
The hacker hit play.

“I owe you answers and when you got this ip address from me, it will be more or less safe to do so. - By the way: Damnit, Hardison! Stop putting trackers on me, man! I ain't your dog or something! - Anyway, this is it. Full disclosure. Well, mostly. But my military jacket, names and dates when I worked retrieval jobs, whatever the CIA file says about me – never read it myself apart from the basic background stuff, but judging from that, they were pretty thorough, but they still don't know enough. You however will get the unredacted version. Starting with that which is not on digital file anywhere…  
Hi! My name is Eliot Spencer and I was born in Dallas, Texas. I am a member of the Cherokee Nation. Thus I pretty much exclusively grew up at Lake Thunderbird and the first time the US government truly knew about my existence was when I enlisted when I was 18. I kinda forgot to tell them about my heritage though...”


End file.
